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It Is Time For A 'Parental Control, No Texting While Driving' Phone

The statistics for the number of deaths and life-altering accidents for our younger drivers are staggering. Texting while driving causes 11 teen deaths EVERY DAY. That is 11 families, schools, and communities that are forever missing children, classmates, teammates, and that great kid next door because they took that 5 seconds it takes to text that they were running late, or whatever not-so-important message they sent. Additionally texting . . .

. . . Causes 25% of all accidents, totally 1.6M per year (Nat’l Safety Council) . . . Causes 330,000 injuries per year (Harvard Center for Risk Analysis Study) . . . Is 6x more dangerous than driving while intoxicated (NHTSB) . . . Is still legal in 11 states to text while driving; only 10 fully prohibit cell phones while driving . . . Is not a teen-only problem with 47% of adults admitting to texting while driving (Washington Post, May 2012)

Each of the major carriers like AT&T or Verizon have committed marketing dollars to build awareness for the problem. Justin Bieber has created a PSA, and several entrepreneurs have created apps to curb these behaviors.

These are all fantastic first steps, but there are two things that need to happen simultaneously to dramatically curb texting and driving.

As previously stated, there are only 10 states with laws on the books that prohibit all cell phone usage while driving, but there are 11 states with no restrictions on distracted driving. The Governors Highway Safety Association is a great state-by-state resource on the current laws for cell phone usage, texting and even usage laws for school bus drivers (yes, in some states it is legal for school bus drivers to text). Additionally, it provides links of programs to address “distracted driving” laws in each state, including resources for you to support these initiatives.

The first best place to start is to lobby your local government to put “distracted driving” laws on the books. The GHSA can help get you started. However, laws will only get this part-way.

Phone Restrictions:

It is time for the major cell phone manufacturers to create a parental controlled, no-texting-while-driving smartphone. There are several apps that will cut off the keyboard when the GPS shows the phone moving over a certain speed. However, this requires parents to know about, download and install, and manage these applications – usually for their children who are smarter and more adept at turning these features off than they are.

Now, imagine the new iPhone or an Android phone with a built-in, parental-locked, no-texting feature on the phone. Upon setup, parents lock the phone when it is traveling over a certain speed – the phone can even put an “I’m driving” auto-reply to all texts coming in. For our teens, who is typically paying for the phone? Parents. Parents would flock to purchase a safe phone for their kids – even paying extra for these features. We have kids in helmets to cross the streets these days. Parents will pay.

It would be a marketing win for these companies – the saving-our-teenage-drivers phone company. The goodwill generated for these companies would only be matched by the market-share they would take over.

Interested? Share this article with your friends and colleagues and comment below that you would be interested in purchasing a parental lock, no-texting-while-driving phone. If there is enough response, I will make sure that representatives from the major manufacturers are made aware of the interest. Let’s start something.

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Thank you Forbes writer Eric Lai and SAP’s Brian Ellefritz for your collaboration in this article. If you are interested in learning more, follow Todd on Twitter @toddmwilms or connect on LinkedIn.

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Comments

First off, the not texting while driving laws in place now do little to stop the practice from happening. Living in California, I know first hand that driver still text/talk on phone while in the car.

Second, I have to disagree with your suggestion of a no texting app. Here’s why: 1. As the article stated, almost half of adults have texted while driving, and with the majority of smartphones in the hands of 18+ year olds, you won’t stop the majority of text related accidents that way. 2. Parents have a personal responsibility to teach their kids not to text and drive. Companies shouldn’t be held responsible for the poor behavior of consumers. 3. This app would demand that the GPS stay on all the time. That can be a severe drain on battery life and again, I doubt that companies would agree to force that sort of functionality. 4. Many parents won’t take the time to make these changes to their child’s phone. 5. This won’t stop texting with non-smartphones, which don’t have GPS or mapping capabilities.

Obviously, texting while driving needs to be continued to be addressed, and I’m happy to hear that large profile campaigns are being waged to convince teenagers and all drivers to be safer on the road. Ultimately, an informed public will be a far safer than what any law or app can achieve. (I think the research on safe sex/abstinence programs have taught us that. You can ban contraceptives, you can promote waiting till marriage, but ultimately, real and direct education will go much farther to correct the problem.)

Awesome article… iRappU is an innovative app that responds to incoming calls and texts, hands-free. Once the recipient has the app activated with their status, “I’m Driving”, and any call or a text that comes in during the activation period, it will respond to the caller immediately letting them know that you are driving and you are not responding to them right now. It works when the recipient and caller have the app downloaded on their mobile device. There is a patent pending on the process of the iRappU innovation. www.irappu.com

Thank you. I did not know about this app, but it sounds awesome. Way to take the lead in helping to craft an app that addresses this problem. “Gold star” for you! Thank you for taking the time to let us know about it.

I’m really sad this article only addresses texting and driving, and I’m afraid the author didn’t quite get all the facts from the NSC straight. 25% of crashes are caused by cell phone GENERAL USAGE. Texting only makes up about 1% of the crashes on our roads. While I agree that action must be taken to end texting behind the wheel, solving the texting problem will not stop the deaths. We need to dig deeper in the National Safety Council’s website to educate ourselves about the cognitive impairment caused by simply TALKING on the phone. Unfortunately I became an expert after losing both my parents and nearly my own life at the hands of a conversation distracted driver. www.focusdriven.org

All our OTTER app users have had Parental Control phones since 2010….good thing too as the CDC just reported that 60% of older teens routinely Text and Drive. I think its starting to become clear that legislation has value in raising public awareness in forums like this one but it will be difficult to solely legislate our way out of this issue. I also read that over 3/4 of teens text daily – many text more than 4000 times a month. New college students no longer have email addresses! They use texting and Facebook – even with their professors. Tweens (ages 9 -12) send texts to each other from their bikes. This text and drive issue is in its infancy and its not going away.

I decided to do something about distracted driving after my three year old daughter was nearly run down right in front of me by a texting driver. Instead of a shackle that locks down phones and alienates the user, I built a texting asset called OTTER that is a simple and intuitive GPS based, texting auto reply app for smartphones. While driving, OTTER silences those distracting call ringtones and chimes unless a bluetooth is enabled. The texting auto reply allows anyone to schedule a ‘texting blackout period’ in any situation like a meeting or a lecture without feeling disconnected. This software is a social messaging tool for the end user that also empowers this same individual to be a sustainably safer driver.

All our OTTER app users have had a Parental Control feature on their phones since 2010….good thing too as the CDC just reported that 60% of older teens routinely Text and Drive. I think its starting to become clear that legislation has value in raising public awareness in forums like this one but it will be difficult to solely legislate our way out of this issue. I also read that over 3/4 of teens text daily – many text more than 4000 times a month. New college students no longer have email addresses! They use texting and Facebook – even with their professors. Tweens (ages 9 -12) send texts to each other from their bikes. This text and drive issue is in its infancy and its not going away.

I decided to do something about distracted driving after my three year old daughter was nearly run down right in front of me by a texting driver. Instead of a shackle that locks down phones and alienates the user, I built a texting asset called OTTER that is a simple and intuitive GPS based, texting auto reply app for smartphones. While driving, OTTER silences those distracting call ringtones and chimes unless a bluetooth is enabled. The texting auto reply allows anyone to schedule a ‘texting blackout period’ in any situation like a meeting or a lecture without feeling disconnected. This software is a social messaging tool for the end user that also empowers this same individual to be a sustainably safer driver.

Firstly, drinking needs to come before driving PERIOD. This is the only country I can think of that allows operating a multi ton vehicle only before one knows their drinking limits and consequences. Secondly, this Driving While Texicating (DWT) problem requires true innovation. No amount of policing will solve the problem as texting is such a base need in the the younger generation. Policing will help lock-up the minivan DWT crowd, however (I will guess that is a large demographic of DWT accidents). Our standards for “good” driving should be policed regardless of cause! We let people drive far too carelessly regardless of the reason.

The CDC just reported that 60% of older teens routinely Text and Drive. I think its starting to become clear that legislation has value in raising public awareness in forums like this one but it will be difficult to solely legislate our way out of this issue. I also read that over 3/4 of teens text daily – many text more than 4000 times a month. New college students no longer have email addresses! They use texting and Facebook – even with their professors. Tweens (ages 9 -12) send texts to each other from their bikes. This text and drive issue is in its infancy and its not going away.

I decided to do something about distracted driving after my three year old daughter was nearly run down right in front of me by a texting driver. Instead of a shackle that locks down phones and alienates the user, I built a texting asset called OTTER that is a simple and intuitive GPS based, texting auto reply app for smartphones. While driving, OTTER silences those distracting call ringtones and chimes unless a bluetooth is enabled. The texting auto reply allows anyone to schedule a ‘texting blackout period’ in any situation like a meeting or a lecture without feeling disconnected. This software is a social messaging tool for the end user that also empowers this same individual to be a sustainably safer driver.